Two Sundance standouts and a star-studded fable headline Melbourne's $300,000 competition field.

The 74th Melbourne International Film Festival announced its 2026 award nominees Thursday, building a prize pool exceeding $300,000. The flagship prize is the Bright Horizons Award: $140,000, supported by VicScreen, for first- and second-time feature directors. Ten films are in contention.

Beth de Araújo's Josephine arrives with considerable weight. The film claimed both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, and went on to receive a Golden Bear nomination at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival. Starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, who also serve as producers, the film follows an eight-year-old girl who witnesses a violent crime on a morning jog with her father, then tracks a family's fracturing as her parents navigate trauma and the American legal system. Sumerian Pictures acquired the film in a seven-figure deal following its Sundance premiere.

Also nominated is Wicker, directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, adapted from Ursula Wills-Jones's short story "The Wicker Husband." The cast includes Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Richard E. Grant, and Elizabeth Debicki. Wicker will open MIFF on August 6 as part of the Bright Horizons Competition, putting it in competition while simultaneously carrying ceremonial status as the festival's opening-night film.

The remaining nominees are Paloma Schneideman's Big Girls Don't Cry, Sophy Romvari's Blue Heron, Abinash Bikram Shah's Elephants in the Fog, Félix de Givry's Goodbye, Cruel World, Marine Atlan's La Gradiva, Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei's The Friend's House Is Here, Rakan Mayasi's Yesterday the Eye Didn't Sleep, and Harvey Zielinski's Sweet Milk Lake.

MIFF Artistic Director Al Cossar described the nominees as "some of the boldest and most brilliant works of new auteur cinema that you'll see this year, anywhere." The awards ceremony takes place August 22 at Rydges Melbourne. The festival runs August 6 to 23 in person, with an online program through ACMI Cinema 3 from August 14 to 30.